I have an R-Pi and an mk802. I run linux on both. While the mk802 is faster for most general things (compiling, serving web pages, etc) the R-Pi beats it as a media player due to the fact the mk802 video drivers haven't been released.

http://liliputing.com/2012/07/allwinner-pledges-support-for-...

I believe most people would like a cheap and small board to use it like they would use a regular computer: high-level development, media player, various "apps", small home server. Clearly, for these people, performance/price is the first and foremost criterion. If it works like it's supposed to, it's a done deal.

As for lower level development, you are probably right, few boards can claim to beat the Pi.

I'd disagree that the order of those is irrelevant. Far and away the two most important ones are `Price' and `Community Size'. If it cost three times as much, the RPi wouldn't have been such a hit; if the community of users was tiny, it wouldn't matter how cheap it was because it wouldn't have critical mass. The Raspberry Pi managed to get out cheap enough and with enough support to make it a runaway success, which is why we now face a glut of similar machines.

The community is pretty big though for all of these kinds of things though, isn't it? There are a lot of Linux users out there.

I think the naked board aspect of the Pi is another relevant attribute.